Sunday, November 21, 2010

I am so sorry that I couldn't get to this when all the drama originally took place...but I was preoccupied with other things.

But, now that it seems that yet another supposed HIV pandemic in porn has been proven to be total nonsense and greatly overhyped, I guess that it's now time to serve some crow to some people.

For those who may not have noted, last July the California porn world was in total chaos because it was leaked that one of their performers had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That set off all the usual hysteria, with porn sets shut down while all the primary and secondary sex partners of the poor afflicted performer (dubbed as "Patient Zets") were tested as per normal procedure by the Adult Industry Medical Foundation, which is basically the official testing organization for the California-based porn industry.

Unfortunately, because this latest scare took place only one year after a similar panic when a female performer was tested positive; the flameout in rhetoric was even more extrreme, with most signs pointing to the breach of the system as the final proof they needed to condemn AIM and promote alternatives...up to and including mandatory condoom usage by all porn performers. Even worse, though, was that "Patient Zeta" also was reported to be a bisexual male who performed gay porn on the side...which added the additional spark of homophobia into the mix as well.

Not surprisingly, plenty of the usual suspects took to the airwaves to decry this ultimate failure of the system. The officios at the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal-OSHA) mined the latest "outbreak" news to reinstated their position that porn sets needed to be fully regulated and performers forced to use condoms as a means of protection and "role modeling" the general public. The biggest and loudest voice, though, came from a group called the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, whose founder and chief spokesman, Michael Weinstein, had long been a fierce foe of AIM and its alleged "monopoly" on STI testing and protection. Weinstein used his microphome and his organization to publically attempt to humiliate AIM and force the LA and Cali authorities to seize power and force mandatory condom usage (and his own testing regime) on the industry carte blanche, citing the potential for a major pandemic among porn performers.

And it would have probably worked, too....except for one small problem. The pandemic never happened.

In a not-unexpected announcement today, Vivid Entertainment, one of the world's leading adult producers, said that it is set to resume movie production on Monday, November 8, after being shut down for almost a month because of health safety concerns.

The move was apparently triggered by the announcement yesterday from the Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Healthcare Foundation that the final actress who could possibly have contracted HIV from the performer now known as "Patient Zeta" has been cleared after the second round of PCR-DNA testing, and has been allowed to resume her acting career.

"The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation has completed testing of two generations of partners of Patient Zeta, from both personal and professional life," AIM General Manager Jennifer Miller said today. "All persons tested negative for HIV on two occasions, using multiple testing methods. It has been established that Patient Zeta acquired the virus through private, personal activity and there was no transmission of the HIV virus from Patient Zeta to anyone else."

"This event affirms the efficacy of AIM Healthcare Foundation’s testing protocols, as voluntarily implemented by the adult entertainment industry," she continued. "It is regrettable but inevitable that people continue to acquire the HIV virus in their personal life. The protocols and other industry practices have resulted in only one incident of HIV transmission on set in more than a decade. That is a remarkable record. AIM Healthcare Foundation is proud of its contribution to the health and well-being of the adult industry and wider community."

Of course, the fact that their dreams of exploiting the "outbreak" for political purposes had been dashed by actual facts weren't going to stop the "push condoms" and "smash AIM" folks from fighting the not-so-good fight. In the midst of the crisis, when it was still possible that things could get hairy, Weinstein's group AHF and the Cal-OSHA people were quite busy attempting to impose their will. They unsuccessfully attempted to browbeat the Los Angeles Metro City Council to suspend all licenses for shooting porn in the Greater LA area. They attempted -- just as unsuccessfully -- to use the courts to force AIM to reveal the identities of "Patient Zeta" and all of her partners through their confidential medical records...while simultaneaously claiming that having AIM release the results of their testing to porn production companies violeted the HIPPA law regarding public release of private medical records.

But mostly, they attempted to use the media to browbeat the industry into submissiveness. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), their delivery system was more than a bit flawed.

Which brings us one more time to that ongoing saga of: Shelley Lubben, Off The Chain.

Yes, our favorite ex-porn, ex-slut ministress is on her soapbox again. Apparently, the folks at AHF have decided that Shelley Lubben should become the official voice for those poor, benighted, abused, diseased, prostituted, and infected women unfortunate enough not to be able to speak for themselves against the Big, Bad Male Porn Grinding Machine. At least, those women for whom her Pink Cross Foundation ministry exploits greatly to pay for all of her makeup and travel....errrrrrrrrrrrr, to minister the glory of God and save them from a hard and brutal life.

Now, one would normally wonder how an agency like AHF who originates atourn advocacy for HIV+ folk -- many of whom happen to be gay men -- would be doing sharing the dais with the likes of Ministress Lubben, whose ministry does seem to have more than a glancing taste of the homophobia. When big money in presumed federal contracts to prooffer testing services supplemented by the potential payoff in condom sales from folks like Durex and Trojan, combines with Shelley's continuous desire for the public spotlight and a nice book deal....well, let's just say that greed makes for strange bedfellows.

The problem is, though, that giving someone as whack as Shelley Lubben the microphone is a dangerous thing. Ask the people at UCLA.

Just this week, they decided to hold what they considered a roundtable discussion on the issue of STI's in porn and the effectiveness of condoms and whether they should be mandated. Representing the "condoms must be mandatory" side: Paula Tavrow of the UCLA School of Public Health, Whitney Engeran-Cordova of AHF, Peter Kerndt of the LA County Health STD program, and Shelley Lubben as "one of the world's leading advocates for women in the adult industry". (More on that lie anon.) Repping the other side: Mr. Marcus, long time Black male porn legend and.....Diane Duke of the Free Speech Coalition. (The latter was a late add to make the panel seem less "fair and balanced".)

Yes, this panel was about as balanced as a FOX News Sunday panel discussion....and Shelley was on her Michelle Bachmann-caliber finest tear that day. Michael Whiteacre was at the conference, and just so happened to videotape some of Lubben's special whackiness. First, the written synopsis, courtesy of AVN:

Lubben, whose website hawks her new book allegedly based on her brief experiences in the industry, and who asked her supporters for their "fervent prayers" about her appearance on the panel, spoke next, and much of what she said was laced with her usual inaccuracies and outright fabrications.

"I worked in the industry in the years 1993 to 1994," she told the audience. "I was forced to have unprotected sex." (See, she chose to work in the industry, but she was forced to have unprotected sex, though she must have known that virtually no companies shot condom porn in the early '90s.)

Lubben launched into a long list of medical problems she claims stemmed from her brief porn career (as opposed to her years working as a prostitute) and also claimed she was "brutally raped on the set when I contacted herpes in a six-man gangbang." (This would have been Filmco's Roxy – A Gang Bang Fantasy, but of course, Lubben never filed rape charges against anyone connected with that movie.)

"Women on the set have no advocate on a mostly male set, and are threatened by porn producers and agents," she continued. "In order to get women to agree to these things, they're given alcohol and drugs and even sent to local doctors to get prescription medicine like Xanax and Vicodin... All this is documented proof."

To accompany her talk, Lubben also made available several handouts, one of which references notorious gossip and liar Luke Ford, who collected industry-bashing quotes from several actresses prior to his leaving the porn-gossip business several years ago. Yet another handout, titled "Backgrounder," contains lies such as that "90% [of porn employees] are child sexual abuse survivors," "66% to 99% of pornography performers are reported with Herpes, a non-curable disease," and "25 HIV cases by performers reported by Adult Industry Medical Healthcare since 2004."

And in case you need the visual to match.... (thank you, Michael Whiteacre):

There are facts...and then there are Lubben Facts. The Free Speech Coalition website post on the UCLA meeting clearly explains the difference.

In fact, the audience could have learned a lot about sexually transmitted infections from the panelists today. Instead, the focus was on statistics for adult industry performers that LACPH has “gathered” from Adult Industry Medical Healthcare (AIM), since the AIM clinic is required to share data with the county. But how many people in the audience recalled that last year, after a performer was diagnosed with HIV, that LACPH claimed, since 2004, there have been as many as 22 cases of HIV in the performing population? The LA Times later retracted the statistic, presumably because it’s not verifiable. But by then, it was too late to stop the spread of misinformation.

No one on the panel spoke more about STIs than Pink Cross’ Lubben, who issued a laundry list of diseases that she claims she contracted “while working in porn,” including herpes, HPV, as well as “extensive reproductive damage,” 12 years of hemorrhaging and severe anemia, due to unprotected sex that she was forced to have on adult production sets. She used the word “rape” liberally to describe her on-set experiences. She also claimed to have contracted HPV during a gangbang shoot with four male performers. Lubben also claims that 66% of adult performers have herpes and that 111 adult industry members have died from AIDS – without citing the statistical sources for this information.

When an audience member forced the question to Lubben, that she had been a prostitute for six years prior to being in her first adult movie (and during her time as a performer, and after she retired from performing), Lubben replied that she had always had “protected sex” as a prostitute, but was “forced” to not use a condom on-set.

• Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is so common, at least 50% of sexually active men and women get it at some point in their lives.

• For those that choose to be sexually active, condoms may lower the risk of HPV… But HPV can infect areas not covered with a condom – so condoms may not fully protect against HPV.

• Results of a nationally representative study show that genital herpes infection is common in the United States. Nationwide, 16.2%, or about one out of six, people 14 to 49 years of age have genital HSV-2 infection.

And that’s the thing – the only way to fight ignorance is with facts.

Yeah, right...and Nina Hartley "contracted chalmydia four times during her career". Of 26 years. (That's more YEARS than you have SCENES, Shelley. Almost TWICE AS MANY, in fact. Scoreboard sucks, doesn't it??) At, least, that's what Ministress Shelley says. I mean, clearly a woman who has performed all of 24....no, check that, 12 videos in one nine month blitz, and who was an active prostitute who has openly claimed in other venues to have unprotected sex and bave contracted everything BUT HIV from her prostitution endevors, is clearly more capable for speaking for all women in porn than a 24 year vet who happens to have a Bachelors degree in nursing, and whom has written several books and made many videos on safer sex and avoiding STI's. Yeah, Shelley...Nina's your bitch, all right.

Oh, but let's save that potential Hartley vs. Lubben ass kicking (figurative, that is) for a future fantasy. Right now, porn women with even half of Nina's legacy can still run world laps around Shelley, and still have enough wind to boot her illogical, fanatical ass into orbit. While I've previously mentioned Monica Foster and Kayden Kross and Vicky Vette who have thouroughly debunked the stupidity and outright lies and slander of the Ministeress, it is still Julie Meadows (aka Lydia Lee) whom has done the most in public service in exposing the rancid lies of Shelley Lubben to the bright light of sunshine. Today in her blog, Julie fires yet one more Truth volley into the Lubben House of Bullshit, using Shelley's own words to impale. It started as a comment to the FSC site, then exploded into a blog entry at Meadows' own blog. I'll simply repost it in its magnificent entirity.

“God also restored my femininity and healed my sexuality, which is a MAJOR miracle for me. After doing prostitution and porn I lost ability to function sexually. The fact that I can enjoy a healthy sexual relationship now is an absolute miracle!! God also healed me of the non-curable disease herpes. I was part of a special military study for pregnant women with herpes in 1996 and when I was tested they said I couldn’t be in the study because there was no herpes virus in my blood. The test came back negative! I also am cancer free as the doctors were able to remove all the cervical cancer. He’s Jehovah-Rophe the God that heals us!”

“As a survivor of the porn industry, I contracted human papillomavirus, and herpes, a non-curable disease, which later led to my battle with cervical cancer, where I had to have half of my cervix removed. I also battled with severe anemia due to the hemorrhaging I experienced for twelve years. In fact, I’m still battling with damages to my reproductive organs.”

“Shelley Lubben: God told me he healed me and I haven’t had an outbreak in over fifteen years, my kids are herpes-free, so, you know what, I just turned to God and he healed me in all these areas of my life. I mean, he’s practical.”

Shelley Lubben: Of course. Like, you could, you could swing a deal anywhere. Any, literally, and uh… and then one, and then this man, he, he um, he bled on my face and it really frightened me, so… um…
Robin Quivers: Bled on your face? How does that, wha?
Howard Stern: He bled on your face? What was, what was that about?
SL: Well, I don’t know. All I know was it scared the hell outta me.
HS: Where was the blood coming from?
SL: His penis.

Howard Stern: Uh, an Asian guy banged you for money, got you pregnant. How did that happen, his rubber break or something?
Shelley Lubben: In all honesty, um, it did. Condoms will leak and break.
HS: Right.
SL: And I’m tellin’ ya, I’ve had plenty of sex to know that condoms aren’t enough protection but they’re better than no protection.

“And, as you know in the industry we do not, there’s not, we don’t use condoms. And so, every single day we live in fear that we’re going to catch a sexually transmitted disease or worse, HIV. Everyday we lived, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, who slept with who?’ And um, I got burned. I caught genital herpes and I thought I was going to die. It’s absolutely the worst thing, it’s the most shameful… I had dealt with so much shame already. This was terrible. And I quietly left the porn industry.”

“I slept with Hollywood directors, actors, singers, I helped contribute to America’s epidemic of herpes. 66% of porn actors and actresses are carriers. 28% have chlamydia and gonorrhea and 7% have HIV. It’s a huge problem. And what we do is when we’re porn stars we’re also prostitutes. We fly around the country and sleep with people for lots of money because they’re our fans. And so then we have unprotected sex with them, of course.”

“And this is how pathetic is was, I used to sell my breast milk for five and ten bucks inside guy’s coffees just to get money for me and my daughter. That’s my pathetic lifestyle in the sex industry and it’s not just me. I don’t care how glamorous these, I see the porn stars, we all had to work our way to the top. We all started out on the street or in escort agency or prostitution. We’ve all been bled upon. We’ve all been smacked around. We’ve all had guys rip condoms on us on purpose. We’ve been through hell. Vietnam Vets, could probably be comparable to what we’ve been through. That’s why we’re tough. We had to tough it out. I’ve had men try to kill me, stalk me, I was driving a motorcycle and some guy took his truck and hit me. Cuz see we’d b.s. ‘em a lot. They don’t like that. I’d have different engagement wedding rings n so I was in my pockets trying to remember which guy gave me which one.”

She states how much more dangerous the adult industry is after stating that, as a prostitute, she was bled upon, stalked, that clients tried to murder her. She repeatedly sites every porn star as being mentally ill though she does not have the education and credentials to diagnosis anyone’s medical situation. She touts only the professional ability to teach and counsel in Christian-[r]elated studies. In fact, her “degree” does not transfer to any accredited college and it is listed on the Consumer Fraud Reporting website as an unaccredited school, prefacing their list with this statement:

“All schools below are considered by the state of Oregon’s and other U.S. and international standards to be UNACCREDITED. Many are scams, a few may be decent schools, but ALL are without accreditation, something most sensible people would say is a starting point to obtain a quality education and a degree that will be broadly accepted and respected.”So the catchphrase “Get The Facts” that is splattered all over Shelley’s personal website and Pink Cross Foundation’s website only applies to other people and not her? Really??? Someone please explain to me how that makes any sense whatsoever. Does she need the definition of the word “fact” read to her?

Lovely how the reporting at Luke Is Back fails to mention how last-minute the meeting was and that the adult industry was all but squeezed out of the discussion. Thank you for actually providing some insight into this event.”

And it's only getting worse now for Ministeress Shelley....a blogger named Cameron Rowe has just opened a blog where he is currently engaging in an expose of Madame Lubben's more...shall we say, outspoken statements. His allegations include these nice tidbits: (1) that Shelley was really a madam when she turned 18 and she was pregnant through her clients rather than through porn; (2) that her degree in Christian ministry is really from a well known "diploma mill" that was so damaged that it waas banned from the state of Conneticut; and (3) that her ordination as a Christian minister is actually just as bogus, having come from an orginization (Order of St. Martin) consisting only of an Irvine, California address and nothing else.

Question for Mike Weinstein and the other folk at AHF: Do you really, really want to sully your campaign with someone like THIS???

[Note: Also crossposted over at The SmackDog Chronicles and at my new Red Garter Club 3.0 blogs]

4 comments:

I decided to do a personal investigation into the "truth" about pornography. What I basically found is a near hysteria which seems to come from the ring wing religious fundamentalist conservatives about anything relating to sex. Period.

Porn causes evil? Legitimate studies have found that as the availability of porn in society goes up, the rate of sex related crimes comes down.

Who buys the most porn? Conservatives.

People tell personal stories "I know a guy...", "I heard of a family..." and pass it off as scientific evidence. The plural of anecdote is not data.

What's the real problem? We are all so hung up about sex, we can't talk about it. Because we can't talk about, we don't deal with it and hide it. A sad state of affairs. The real problem isn't pornography, it is our own sexuality.

I crossposted this article as well over at my SmackDog Chronicles and my new Red Garter Club 3.0 blogs, and promptly got this series of comments from Michael Whiteacre that deserve to be reposted here. This is the first of 3.

Cheers to you for this piece.

The organizers of the UCLA School of Law panel ACTIVELY PLOTTED to keep adult industry members away, and I can attest that it is true. This event was not promoted at all. Google and Yahoo searches turned up nothing. I stumbled upon a reference to it in the calendar on Shelley Lubben’s site two days before the event. She listed the name of the event, the location, and gave the start time as 11:00 am. I passed the info on to Free Speech Coalition, and Diane Duke essentially “bullied” her way onto the panel. FSC also alerted AVN. The next day (the day before the event) AVN mentioned the event, and it also popped up on Darrah Ford's blog (listing the start time, correctly, as 11:30 am).

Shelley Lubben must have been told to not promote the event, because after FSC (and AVN) called over to the organizers, citing Shelley’s website as how they heard about it, the start time on Shelley’s site was mysteriously ALTERED to 2:00 pm (which is 50 minutes after he event had to end so that a scheduled class could use the room). That altered start time is still on her website as I write this. I must conclude they called her to complain, and Shelley’s instinct, as usual, was to distort the truth. She takes a kernel of truth, and then twists it to serve her needs.

This panel was plotted as a way for a cabal of likeminded interests to add another all-star meeting to their roster, try out their propaganda on a small test audience, and hopefully get a few quotes to use for self promotion. That I helped out them, and take the fight to them, is a badge of honor for me. But the real praise belongs to Mr. Marcus and Diane Duke, who knowingly walked into a turkey shoot.

The panelists shamelessly confused and conflated anecdotal evidence with statistics, for both the straight and gay porn industries. No one knows for sure what percentage of gay performers have HIV, or any STI. There is no statistical evidence, only anecdotal evidence. This is the kind of “proof” that Shelley Lubben uses when she claims that there have been “111 AIDS deaths” in the adult industry. That number is derived from the number of deaths among men who also appeared in gay porn.

As you know, straight porn tests performers BEFORE they’re allowed to enter the talent pool, and monthly thereafter, while the gay side does not require any testing. No testing = no stats.

Since there’s no system in place from keeping HIV+ men out of gay porn, there’s no way to track when or where the gay performers became infected – outside the industry or in it. There are NO stats. If people with HIV or AIDS appear in some gay porn movies before they die, that doesn’t mean porn killed them. There are several adult performers who died of cancer. That’s like saying porn causes cancer.

Is there a substantial percentage of gay talent who are HIV+? Yes. But we don’t know how much. The numbers given above are speculative. We also don’t know how effective condoms may or may not be in the gay porn paradigm because, again, there is no testing.

In an interview, [Shelley] Lubben said plainly that she’d “love to see porn come down.”

“America just sees the finished product, so we’re just exposing this terrible evil and slavery,” she said, adding that she was taking on the pornography industry because “God gave me this vision.”

Lubben acknowledged that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation had different long-term goals, but she said she was happy to work with anyone who could advance the Pink Cross mission.

“We believe the beast can be stabbed in seven different places and bleed to death,” she said.... Right now, the issue that’s working is workplace safety, and, through it, Lubben has “found a common denominator” with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

*****

AHF, for their part, tries to keep Lubben at arms length, but this is clearly a deal with the devil. Not that the folks at AHF are any angels...

In 2004, AHF filed lawsuits in response to a 400% price increase by Abbott for its drug Norvir, (a protease inhibitor commonly used in small doses to help make other HIV drugs more potent). What was the settlement that AHF accepted? Abbott would NOT reduce the price of Norvir, but would instead contribute money to treatment programs run by AHF. "This was a carefully orchestrated sell-out by AHF," said Thomas Gegeny, Executive Director of The Center for AIDS in Houston (and an AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition member) at the time. That's what it smells like to me.

Michael Weinstein at AHF has a lot of nerve talking about greed. AHF has a very long history of acting in its own financial best interests to the exclusion of those in the community as a whole. For your readers further edification:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9MOWF94_II&hd...

AHF's billboard near my home in West Hollywood reads "People Before Profit." Every time I see it, I am tempted to spit.

Gee...you mean that those lawsuits AHF filed to shake down the makers of Viagara for "causing sexual irresponsibility" wasn't meant to put people first?? Coul'da fooled me.

And...here's the third and final segment of Michael Whiteacre's comment stream to my original post on Shelley Lubben and AHF:

The current push to make porn sets a "friendly workplace" is simply the latest volley in a larger war. There are those who would turn this nation into a child-safe day nursery - with them as the nursery school teachers. The adult industry is not opposed to regulation, but it demands industry-appropriate regulations. In the present case, neither the OSHA regulations presently enacted, nor the laws and regulations proposed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), pass muster.

The regulations, as presently promulgated, were developed for medical clinics in the early 1990s and were arbitrarily imposed upon the adult industry. There's no handling of blood, syringes, infected bandages, and other hazardous materials on film sets. Film sets can be dangerous work environments, and there are likely more injuries in a week on mainstream Hollywood sets than there are in a year on porn sets -- yet mainstream Hollywood's workplace regulations were developed for film sets, not medical testing labs.

Even worse, the plan proposed by AHF and company will either drive porn shoots underground or it will force them out of state (or out of the country), where there are fewer health and safety regulations in place (and where the talent pool is not tested monthly as it is in California). People will be LESS safe in that instance, not more -- a result directly adverse to AHF's purported goals.

We are talking about a business, so economics must also intrude on the discussion. Porn and healthcare are both fields where the two intersect. The market viability of condom-only (straight) porn is very low. The adult industry has already been hobbled by internet piracy (which is why guys like Weinstein pop up, thinking they'll take advantage of an industry on the ropes), and they can't and won't accept another major hit to their bottom line. Productions will be forced out of California.

There's also a larger economic argument:I believe that the goal of AHF is to force all porn shoots of every genre in California (and eventually elsewhere, starting wth the other state where they have a stronghold, Florida) to use both testing AND condoms, with AHF installed as the government-sanctioned and ordained "official" testing and treatment clinic. It will provide the condoms manufactured by its supporters in "Big Latex" and do all the testing in their clinics. AHF will not only capture extra market-share, it will be able to grab even more government grant money. That is what this fight is about. The more patients they have, the more money hey make -- it's that simple. That system, for which it seems clear they have been angling, will deal a devastating blow to the entire adult film community -- producers, staff and talent alike. It will also have dire economic consequences in this state. Adult productions generate jobs, taxes, permit fees and the like. The only beneficiaries of this proposed new paradigm would be the interests who "just so happened" to be sitting on that UCLA panel this week.

I may be a strong supporter of nationalized health care and single payer, but trust me on this one....this is one of the few times where I'm close to becoming a damn Teabagger.

Having a decent testing regime that protects performers while respecting their individual rights is a good thing. Having government become a cash cow for certain interests using performers as guinea pigs for their condom sales and social engineering, however, just plain isn't.

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Why yes, this blog is dedicated to pro-porn activism! With the belief that pornography falls under the auspices free speech and expression, and is legitimate entertainment for consenting adults, if made for and by consenting adults. One, as a consenting adult, has the right to make and view pornography as they choose.